1. Not really, but I get your point.

No one is being forced to work without pay. They can quit and seek a paying job - certainly not a good or fair option, but an option, nonetheless. They're not property, subject to beatings or whatever other treatment their owners choose to impose on them. They can come and go as they please, marry whom they want, their children aren't being sold away from them, they're not being forced to have sex with their owners and bear their children or stand by helplessly while their wives and daughters are.

This is a terrible, cruel situation for government workers. But it is NOT slavery, which is far more than working without pay.

5. I worked yesterday morning.

In fact, I won't be paid for that on my next payday, 1/20. I'll be paid for that on 2/5. So I go 25 days from when I work to when I get paid. How unjust. Okay, I'm a slave "lite."

That's how it is. Consider a farmer. Seeds go in the ground in March. It's 3 months later and the corn's about ripe. Now it's late July--and not only has he worked for three months, but he had to use money he was responsible for to buy the seed corn, equipment, fertilizer, etc.. Maybe he'll sell some to the fresh-corn market. Then he'll get paid in August. Or perhaps he'll let the corn dry and sell it for fodder. Then he'll see the stuff in Guaust and get paid anywhere from September till December.

Still misses the point of slavery. I'm not a slave--except in some metaphorical sense that gets rid of much of the actual degradation and moral depravity of slavery in order to keep the symbol, the word 'slave'. And neither's the farmer.

7. No, it's not

It's a hardship. But it's not slavery - lite or otherwise. Attempts to equate temporary financial hardships to the most egregious, degrading and tragic institution this country had imposed on humans is ahistorical and insulting.

9. I will not take it back.

I believe it is a form of slavery. Someone is completely putting your life , your children lives in jeopardy and you have to sit back and take it right up your ass. Yes , you can quit but they may not save you. Someone has taken control of your life, that's the truth.

6. You can do better than this.

8. None of the federal employees are being forced to work.

Strictly speaking, they are not. They can quit. They can walk away. No one is going to capture them, imprison them, beat them, rape them, sell them, or forcibly separate them from their families for refusing to work.

12. I am tired of Americans being sheep.

I used to be a federal worker. If they told me I had to work without pay I would have gone nuts on them. No fucking way. What the American people are putting up with is complete bullshit. All federal workers should break the law and walk the fuck out. STRIKE!

21. If you are actually forced to work without pay - you might get to slavery light (e.g. imprisonment).

BUT that is not what is happening here.

No federal employee is being forced to work without pay. Period.

Every single federal employee could walk off the job today, without direct consquence to life and limb. There may be contractual (and financial) consequences for walking off without proper notice (unless you are not an at-will employee). BUT the federal government is not going to chase you with hounds and guns, throw chains around you and drag you behind a car, a noose around your neck and string you up in a tree, or worse, for walking off off the job. Those (or era-specific equivalents thereof) are not only things that all happened to slaves who walked off the "job" - but the perpetrators of such violence were legally entitled to inflict such atrocities because slaves were (legally) nothing more than property.

48. You're being fucking ridiculous.

24. When an employer tells you, "Sorry. I can't pay you this month,"

it's time to start looking for a new job. Businesses that can't make payroll will soon be bankrupt. The answer to that statement should always be, "Sorry, then I can't work for you. I work for my paycheck. If you don't pay me, I don't work for you. It's that simple."

As someone who has been working freelance for almost 50 years, I've heard that crap from people I've delivered my work product a number of times. It goes something like this: "Say, I'm still waiting for a check from one of my clients, so I can't pay you for that article I published." That's what they always say. I always say this:

"Look. You gave me an assignment. You liked my work. You published it. Pay me as we agreed. Now! If you don't, I will not only not produce work for you in the future, but I will also inform my network of others who write for a living and let them know to be careful about working for you."

I always got paid right away. There is no excuse for not paying someone for work they have done for you. No excuse at all. Workers contract with employers. They work. The employer pays. Failure to pay results in no further work. It is a very simple equation, but one that workers have to stick to. Every last freaking time.

The federal employees who are not getting checks for a previous pay period should simply not show up until they do. That's guaranteed to get people's attention. If all TSA workers walked off, along with the air traffic controllers, and every other federal employee who is not being paid for actual work, it would be the headline in every news outlet.

Pay up, Feds! Pay up, or we don't work. That's called a "Job Action." If threatened with being fired, you simply say, "Fired? From a job where I don't get paid? Really?" There are no replacement workers. Air traffic controllers require extensive training. TSA agents require training, too. If everyone walks, there's nobody to replace them and it all shuts down. That's the power of labor.

25. Thank you.

27. I've been my own boss most of my adult life.

I create products by writing. I sell them to others. If they don't pay me, they're screwed if they want more of what I produce.

My invoices all say: "Payable on receipt." I mean it. A few have tried to put me off for 30, 60, 90 days, or even indefinitely. I have a brief conversation with them about that, and I either get paid immediately or they get nothing more from me and I tell everyone I know that they didn't pay me.

I do high quality work. But I work based on an agreement that I write; they pay. Always. Except for writing I do on my own account, like here on DU.

No pay? No freaking work! Pay up!

I have always gotten paid right away after telling someone that. There are no acceptable excuses.

31. Or to the absurd allegation that furloughed employees are slaves. n/t

33. Not a damn thing.

Just the ill informed trying to tap into a history and vocabulary to prove their point. It's the same edginess that lies behind that equally offensive Yoko Ono/John Lennin quote that Bette Midler got flamed for using. There are multiple ways to describe the situation occurring to furloughed workers atm. Slavery is not one of them.

39. I know exactly what you were talking about

Hence my question. If you are so adamant about ™No pay, no work" (even though the employees who are working have been promised they'll be paid), are you as adamant that "No work, no pay" should be applied to workers who AREN'T working and therefor, they should not be paid for the time they provided no service?

However, I'm still not clear what your call for federal employees to adopt your "no pay no work" demand has to do with this since the employees will eventually be paid...

46. They will be paid if Congress passes a measure to pay them and the

President signs it. So far, that measure does not exist. There is no assurance that people will be paid, and I don't trust Donald Trump for one minute to sign such a bill if his petty project doesn't get funded.

The trust between our government and the governed is a fragile thing, and right now it's threatened severely. If you think Donald Trump is worried about workers who are working without a paycheck, you are wrong. He doesn't care. Not one bit. He has failed to pay so many people who have worked for him in the past that it's clear that he thinks it's optional.

A message needs to be sent. Right now, there are two groups of people who are working without pay who can send that message. They are the TSA and the Air Traffic Controllers. It's not an enormous number of workers. A work stoppage by those two groups would bring the US economy to an abrupt halt. The impact would be enormous and eminently obvious. The power to do that is in their hands.

Just think about what such a Job Action would do. Within one day, the results would be crystal clear to everyone. It would be the story of the year. One day.

That's the power of Labor. I doubt such a thing will happen, frankly. But, if it did, it would send a shockwave through the economy that would never be forgotten. Never.

51. Congress already passed a bill guaranteeing their pay

And maybe, instead of sitting at your computer talking smack and telling these folks how they should risk their livelihoods in order to make the point you think they should make, you can organize some protests that will shut down the economy and will show them that you have their backs.

58. We're both sitting in front of a computer or other device this afternoon,

59. Yes, we are

The difference is that I'm not sitting at my computer second-guessing people who are going through a struggle I don't have to deal with and have made choices I don't have to make about situations I'm not in, I'm not demanding that they take action I'm not willing to take and I'm not suggesting they're weak or misguided because they're not doing what I think they should do.

40. Of course. That's a different issue, though.

Congress could pass and the President sign a bill that eliminated all federal retirement programs, retroactively. It could absolutely do that. Think about it.

It could also eliminate all pension protection systems funded by the government.

It would be very unpopular to do that, but it is certainly possible, and I guarantee that there are people in Congress and in the White House who would gladly do so.

Our entire system is based on trust. So is our system of labor and compensation for that labor. We work, trusting that we will be paid for that work as we agreed. When that trust is violated, the system is broken. At some point, it can be broken beyond repair.

The labor force has one powerful option. That option is to withhold its work. It is the only option available when pay is not forthcoming for work performed. It is an awesome power.

We have forgotten that, it seems. We should remember that we have that power.

54. Yea it sucks

55. Some things strike me as I read these posts.

1. We have a lot of intelligent but really stubborn people on DU that will go to almost any end to win an argument. That's just an opinion I have formed and it is not just due to this particular OP.

2. Walking away and finding another job is not always so easy, for various reasons. What do you say to a potential employer during a job interview when they ask the inevitable question: "Since you have several years experience in your previous position and the current shutdown is the main reason you want to work for my company, why should I go to the expense of possible additional interviews, background checks, checking your references and then training you if necessary, when you may well return to your previous job at any time?" Anyone that thinks the employer will not consider that scenario is not being realistic, unless the job is something that is generally temporary anyway.

3. People affected by this shutdown have the right to make their own decisions on how they deal with it without being called sheep or being judged by others who are not even directly affected.

4. and F the GOPers. I just thought I would throw that in there.... Hang together or hang separately.